1. History. Marvel has never made much use of its Golden Age characters, apart from Captain America and the Submariner (and an occasional return of the original Human Torch).
This is unlike DC, where folks like the original Flash and Green Lantern are not only mentioned but embraced, both used and respected. But Marvel has always tended to cut its ties with the past to a greater extent than DC. (Granted that most of Marvel's superhero comics ended with World War II--having been far more closely associated with that event than most of the DC heroes, who tended to stay stateside and deal more often with criminals than with the enemy--or became horror titles, while Batman and Superman kept going right on through the dark ages of superherodom that were the 50s.) When Marvel reintroduced superhero books in the early 1960s, the focus was almost entirely on new characters. Apart from Cap and the Sub-Mariner, the Golden Age heroes had no meaningful place in the modern Marvel world.
There were exceptions, of course, particularly during the 70s--the entire original Invaders series, the appearance of the Whizzer in the pages of The Avengers back in the 70s (at this point the working hypothesis on Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch's parentage was that they were the children of the Whizzer and Miss America, two Golden Age heroes). But The Invaders took place during World War II, well away from contemporary Marvel continuity, and the Whizzer was an old man, well past his hero days. The original Human Torch was unavailable for years, because his android body was supposedly the same one used to make the Vision (this turned out not to be the case, eventually).
More recently, the New Invaders book featured some Golden Age heroes, including Spitfire (who was actually created during the 70s for the Invaders series) and Union Jack (also created during the 70s, and a later version to boot) as well as genuine 40s characters such as the Blazing Skull and the original Human Torch. There were also guest appearances by such minor Golden-Agers as The Fin and Red Raven. (Incidentally, I very much enjoyed this book but it took some work for me to get past the art. I don't believe it sold very well, and in any case it was cancelled some time ago.)
And the Winter Soldier/Bucky himself? Well, he wouldn't have done well if he'd returned along with Cap back in the 60s. Silver Age Marvel made no use of kid sidekicks. The closest they came was with Rick Jones, who honestly worked much better with the Hulk than he did with Captain America (his relationship with Captain Mar-vell was really out of the sidekick realm, so I'm not including it). Now, though, he has a potential link not only with Captain America and the other Golden Age heroes, but with a lot of the Cold War era characters such as the Black Widow, or Iron Man if IM hadn't been written out of that era.
2. Man out of time. When Captain American was discovered by the Avengers, frozen in ice, there was some mention made of his feeling out of his own time, but on the whole he seemed to deal well with this, and quickly. Then again, Cap was revived in the 60s, less than twenty years after his disappearance. His old girlfriend Peggy Carter was still around, only now in her 40s (so of course he dumped her for her younger sister Sharon, something which I'd find a bit offensive if I saw it in a modern book). Although there were certainly a lot of changes during those twenty years, it's a whole different thing from the sixty years the Winter Soldier has to deal with. His old friends aren't just older, they're probably dead. The culture has changed radically, and he'll have little in common with other twenty-somethings (what is he, 28 or so?)--he lacks the cultural familiarity that gives us a sense of belonging (and he'll never win a game of Trivial Pursuit).
On the other hand, it's not clear how much time he spent out of stasis while the Soviets had him. He did act as Karpov's bodyguard for a while, a long-term mission during which he would have been of little use if he'd been in stasis, so he would have had to have been out and about consistently for a while during the late 80s--I don't know how much autonomy Karpov would have given him but surely he would have seen a bit of what went on in the modern world. So he's undoubtedly comfortable with a good deal of modern technology, not only because of his bits of existence out of stasis but because he wouldn't have been much good as an agent if he wasn't. It'll be interesting to see how this is handled. My own thought is that he'd probably deal a lot better with the modern world materially than he would socially and emotionally.
3. Pain and suffering. This isn't so much a "cool thing" as it is a "saleable thing," because comic writers love to make their characters suffer, and comic readers love to see it. And I can't think of a single Marvel character with a greater potential for suffering and angst than the Winter Soldier. There's the war experience itself--even Captain America still has nightmares about what went on during the war (granted that a lot of his bad dreams involve Bucky, but not all), and the teenage Bucky was either slitting throats (re Brubaker) or frying Nazis with flamethrowers (re actual 1940s comics), which for a basically-good person isn't a comfortable thing. But of course the greatest source of misery is going to be his memories of his actions as a Soviet assassin.
At this point I don't think it's clear where his head is at, but I think it's likely that he remembers not only what he did but how he felt about doing it at the time--in other words, he's going to remember doing things he now considers horrific and feeling pretty good about doing them. After all, it wasn't that the Soviets had him doing different things as one of their agents--he'd killed any number of German soldiers during the war--he was performing many of the same acts on their behalf that he had performed as an American soldier and patriot during WWII. The difference was a subjective one. He'll remember (presumably) perceiving himself as a communist, or at least anti-capitalist. He'll remember feeling loyalty to people he now knows deserved nothing of the sort. He'll remember that he considered the people he killed--people he now knows were allies--to be enemies. I'm guessing that it doesn't help that people, including Captain America, seem to be simplifying the experience--"It wasn't your fault, you weren't responsible"--when that's not the way he perceives it right now.
Ordinarily this sort of misery and despair would be something I'd find tedious after a while, but I think there's something key here in Bucky's genuine personality. Captain America, both in the 40s and in the present day, tends to be an earnest and serious fellow. He isn't humorless by any means, but he has a strong sense of his role and that's going to lend him a certain gravity. Bucky, on the other hand, was much more likely to be irreverent, to crack wise, to go about his work (presumably the ass-kicking part rather than the throat-slitting part) with joy and enthusiasm. That doesn't mean that he doesn't take what he's doing seriously, but he was originally presented as a far lighter character than Cap, and I think that will end up being a good indicator of where he stands with regard to his recovery from a very bad ten years of life. We saw him smile, crack half a joke, in Captain America #21; that's a good sign.
So, yes, I think this could be successfully dragged out for years to come.
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